STUDYING Abroad

This week featured the actual "studying" part of study abroad. It was my first week of classes as an official Westminster Student and let me tell you it's a lot different than back home.

For starters I'm not too crazy about having to schedule in an extra hour just for transportation. It only really takes me about 20 minutes to get to and from school on the tube but I'm just paranoid there could be a delayed train or something and then I'd be late. Can't take any chances. Have to add in the fact that this week I also had no idea where my classes were. On Monday I probably wandered around for a good 15 minutes trying to find my classroom. All of the staircases would only lead up to certain parts of the second floor, not the whole thing. It took me a lot of trial and error to find the right one.

Differences:
- British people call the first floor the ground floor, that means the second floor is really the first floor. Definitely confuses a girl!
- Each class is called a module and each module has a lecture and a seminar. The lecture is the entire class and the seminar is your class broken up into smaller groups. Together it makes class about three painful hours. Needless to say I begin to lose focus and become fidgety when hour two rolls around.
- Most classes only have about two to three assignments. It consists of a presentation and a final exam or final paper. So a presentation can be about 40% of your grade and the final about 60%. It's nice to not have a lot of things to during the semester but adds a lot of stress when exam time rolls around.

I have noticed that I go to a pretty big foreign exchange school as well. Most kids are from places in America or other parts of Europe. I have literally met more kids from everywhere else in Europe besides England. What a downer.

Thursday night had to be the highlight of the week. My cousin Katie took my friends and I out to this place called Madison's. It was on the top floor and had the most beautiful view of St. Paul's and the London skyline. We were literally mesmerized. #Thursdates have begun.

Today we wandered around the Natural History Museum looking at all of the dinosaurs, mammals, and ocean life. We walked around outside for a little while and ran into Harrod's! It was perfect. We were able to see all of the things we had missed on our last visit. We missed a lot!! Lauren, Mom, Kathy, and Megan we are so going there when you come to visit!! You'll become just as obsessed as I am. Today was also the first real snowfall in London. While I thought it was beautiful and was used to it having grown up in Oklahoma you could tell most Londoners hated/freaked out a little. A little snow never hurt anyone!

View from my room :)